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Louisiana fishers, others get tips on how to capitalize on ecotourism

Plaquemines EcotourismLouisiana fishers and others get tour the Stella Plantation in Plaquemines Parish's Braithwaite community during Coastal Ecotourism Workshop on Tuesday March 12, 2013. Chalyn Perez, the grandson of Leander Perez who now directs the Stella Plantation, talks about family plantation and Erik Johnson, Louisiana's bird conservation director for the National Audubon Society, discusses "birding." (Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune).Watch video

"And for you all, it's not reinventing the wheel, it's working with what you've already got." - Twyla Herrington, LSU AgCenter fisheries agent

At Plaquemines Parish's Stella Plantation, surrounded by its marshes, cypress trees and live oaks, Louisiana fishers, farmers and landowners on Tuesday heard how they can use the resources and environmental know-how they already have to bring in extra money though ecotourism. The idea is that fishers and others, who often struggle to survive in industries easily besieged by environmental disasters and imports that drive down prices, could attract city folks from metro New Orleans and across the nation by offering them a glimpse, a taste, an experience, of what it's like to live off the land and water.

Twyla Herrington, the Louisiana Sea Grant and LSU AgCenter fisheries agent for Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, explained that 38 percent of Americans who are 16 and older participated in outdoor activities in 2011, an increase of 2.6 million people from 2006, with 11 percent of that increase in recreational fishing.

"Ecotourism fishing is more than just catching the fish -- it is the experience, it is the culture," Herrington said. "It is like Mardi Gras. People don't just go to catch that best throws, it's the experience they come for.

"And for you all, it's not reinventing the wheel, it's working with what you've already got."

Herrington listed some examples of fishing ecotourism elsewhere. There's the Amelia River Cruises in Florida where two-hour "ecoshrimping tours" go for $27 a person. Or there's The Biloxi Shrimping Trip, which advertises "a 70-minute peek into how the journey begins for a shrimp and how it ends up on your plate." And there's even "catchacrab" in Australia that offers, in addition to trapping live crabs, the opportunity to "hand-feed the friendly wild pelicans."

Erik Johnson, Louisiana's bird conservation director for the National Audubon Society, said 25 percent of Americans say they participate in bird watching, or "birding." He explained how in April and May, a spring migration brings a wide variety of birds through southeast Louisiana and presents an amazing ecotourism potential.

View full sizeLouisiana fishers and others on Tuesday get rides around the Stella Plantation in Plaquemines Parish's Braithwaite community during a coastal ecotourism workshop. Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | Times-Picayune

Chalyn Perez, the grandson of Leander Perez who now directs the Stella Plantation, talked about how in 2010 he turned his family's 1,500-acre site in Braithwaite into an ecotourism destination. Currently, it provides an oasis for wedding and corporate events, where folks can get tours of the property, its birds and citrus groves, and they can even hunt for hogs and pheasant.

But soon, Perez told the audience, Stella will be even more: a type of local ecotourism one-stop shop. He said he is building crawfish ponds on the grounds, where visitors will be able catch the crawfish themselves and then have them cooked by staff.

He's also building a lake, stocked with fish, surrounded by cabins where up to 40 people could stay overnight. There will be a variety of hunting opportunities as well, from deer to ducks, along with the current pheasant and hog -- which staff members will clean and pack up for hunters.

"We have found that people in the city want to get out and discover something," Perez said. "It is important to identify those little things that we might not think are unique as we've gown up with them, but that people in the city might find interesting and worth a trip."

Louisiana Sea Grant and LSU AgCenter put on the Tuesday workshop and showcased Stella as an example of a successful ecotourism model.

Daryl Jones, the coordinator of the Natural Resource Enterprises (NRE) Program at Mississippi State University, weighed in on the potential of natural resources. "Everyone throughout the country has grown up hearing about Louisiana oystering, shrimping, fishing, and they want to see it, he said.

He said 90 million people in the United States participate in outdoor activities, spending $145 billion a year in the process, with fishing representing about $42 billion, hunting bringing in $34 billion and "wildlife watching" accounting for about $55 billion -- "simply showing people things that we see every day."

In Louisiana, he said, fishing brings in more than $1 billion a year, hunting about $525 million and wildlife watching nets about $310 million annually.

"We always try to hit a home run by getting industry to come to our areas, things like a Nissan plant, to get those jobs into our communities, but these rural traditional industries bring in all this money on an annual basis and have the potential to bring in much more," Jones said.

George Barisich, president of the United Commercial Fisherman's Association, told the group he's thinking about doing overnight shrimping tours. First though, he plans to sort out the cost for insurance, something many fishers don't have, because it often is cost-prohibitive.

Mike Massey, a Mississippi lawyer who runs www.outdoorlawyer.com, said, "There are hordes of doctors and lawyers who would dearly love to find a piece of property that they can go to and fish or hunt for a getaway."